Timeline for What to look for in applicants to graduate programs (in mathematics)?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
18 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 8 at 19:45 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by Stefan Kohl♦ | ||
| Mar 8, 2010 at 18:02 | comment | added | Douglas Zare | Sometimes the median score is 0. Sometimes the median score is over 10. d.umn.edu/~jgallian/putnam05.pdf page 9. A little preparation makes it much easier to score at least 20 without much of a background. | |
| Mar 8, 2010 at 17:16 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | @HB: I have now looked at even more grad school applications and come upon some references to Putnam participation in recommendation letters. It seems now that a positive Putnam score is worthy of comment to some recommenders. @AM: It would suffice to say "I am active on Math Overflow, under username..." It would take some explaining to the rest of the graduate committee what MO is all about, but it's worth a shot. | |
| Feb 23, 2010 at 0:35 | comment | added | Akhil Mathew | @Pete: For future reference, how would you want an applicant to list MO experience? (Reputation? Number of non-soft questions answered?) | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 18:37 | comment | added | Douglas Zare | I want to mention another Putnam story, about why my college's team didn't do well one year. One of my teammates loved one of the problems in the morning. He spent almost the whole 3 hours on it. Ok, that's not too uncommon, but definitely something I taught people to avoid as a coach. What was remarkable was that he also spent the afternoon session working on it, when he wouldn't get credit for solving it. Not surprisingly, he received a poor score on the exam, but I believe he went on to a decent graduate school in mathematics. | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 4:25 | comment | added | Douglas Zare | @Gerhard: This "student" graduated long ago and is not in mathematics. I don't think it's a problem that in theory, you could figure out his identity and therefore that I said something about his course selection. | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 4:06 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | @HB: I am really not a Putnamist, but I would say that any score of at least 15 or so would certainly count non-negatively. Since I haven't actually seen any Putnam scores in graduate applications, I can't say how high a score would actually make me more likely to want to admit a candidate. I personally would count your participation on MO much more positively than any Putnam score. | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 3:45 | comment | added | Harrison Brown | @Pete (and I guess anyone else): So, at what point does it become a net positive to include Putnam scores on an application? Obviously there's not much point in including it if you've only received scores of 0 or 10 or so, but is it worthwhile if you've done reasonably well (top 200? top 100? Honorable Mention?) but aren't a Fellow? | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 1:54 | comment | added | Gerhard Paseman | @DZ: Your comment about the non-math major has (in my opinion) too much information for the point I think you are making. If I were the student, I might forgive the comment about not getting through the core classes if my anonymity were preserved. If possible, it might be good to edit/replace the comment with something that makes the same point without giving so much identifying information. | |
| Feb 20, 2010 at 15:17 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | @DZ: Thanks for your response; you certainly have far more experience with the Putnam than I. I think what you are saying is fully consistent with what I'm saying. Key observation: it takes more to be a successful graduate student (and even an undergraduate student) in mathematics than natural ability. | |
| Feb 20, 2010 at 7:28 | comment | added | Douglas Zare | @Pete: As an extreme example, one Putnam fellow I know was not a math major, and in fact, was not able to get through the core undergraduate math classes, perhaps due to a lack of interest. He was the world puzzle champion 4 times (maybe more later), and the puzzles on those puzzle competitions are amazing. I believe what I taught as a coach had a large effect on the scores of some of the students, and it could have been more if I had been a better coach, but I definitely was not teaching what it takes to be a successful graduate student in mathematics. | |
| Feb 20, 2010 at 7:17 | comment | added | Douglas Zare | @Joel: Ideally, students will be flexible, and there will be several choices. In practice, some students will have specialized or will know that they are more inclined toward number theory, or more toward statistics, or differential geometry, and then it's a clear mismatch if there are no professors in that area. It's pretty bad if there are professors in that area but they are not happily taking students, which may be known in the department but not obvious to applicants. I recommend that students who are not specialized try to apply to schools with larger departments. | |
| Feb 20, 2010 at 6:28 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | To further clarify: I'm not saying that I see a Putnam fellow and think "She's going to be a world-class mathematician one day." But I do think "She has more than enough natural ability to get a PhD in mathematics." Natural ability matters up to a certain point and no more. As Richard Feynman put it, "We are not that much smarter than each other." | |
| Feb 20, 2010 at 6:22 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | @DZ: I say this as someone who took the Putnam only in my freshman year, didn't enjoy it, and got less than a 20 on it: I think sufficiently high Putnam scores are fairly convincing evidence of research ability: e.g. being told that someone was a Putnam fellow is more indicative of sufficient ability to get a PhD than any one other piece of evidence I can think of. It's just that low/absent Putnam scores are no evidence at all of the lack of research ability. As a practical matter, I have been looking at PhD applications recently and saw no Putnam scores whatsoever. | |
| Feb 20, 2010 at 6:16 | comment | added | Joel David Hamkins | "The applicant should have an area of interest which coincides with that of a professor in the department". I don't agree with this, and this view I think is a cultural difference between the US and elsewhere, particularly Europe. At most US universities, it is not necessary to have already specialized. Indeed, I sometimes receive inquires from foreign students who want to come and work with me, and who want me to commit to this, but I am reluctant to agree before seeing the student for a year or more. Let the student come and explore his or her interests with various professors. | |
| Feb 20, 2010 at 6:10 | comment | added | Qiaochu Yuan | Which is not to say that there isn't a difference between a score of zero and a score of thirty. But if anyone is making significant distinctions past that then they are valuing someone who thinks and writes quickly over someone who can do research. (Full disclosure: my own Putnam scores are decent, but not spectacular. I often overestimate problems and write slowly, neither of which, I think, correlate with my potential to do research.) | |
| Feb 20, 2010 at 6:06 | comment | added | Qiaochu Yuan | I'm glad someone is expressing skepticism about the Putnam! As Kiran Kedlaya once put it, all it tells you is that if you enjoy problems that take hours instead of minutes to solve, perhaps - perhaps - you'd enjoy problems that take months to solve instead of hours. | |
| Feb 20, 2010 at 5:58 | history | answered | Douglas Zare | CC BY-SA 2.5 |